He said nothing about it; he asked no one’s advice; but at four o’clock on the morning after his release on bail he set out on foot to the county seat, and at nine o’clock presented himself at the ancient and shabby offices of Colonel Donaldson on Law Row, just behind the courthouse. Heart pounding fast, he told his story to the dry and pedantic old lawyer, who sat behind a littered table in a dingy room where rows of dusty books, Shakespeares, Miltons, Thackerays, Dickenses, and Scotts climbed upward to the cobwebby ceiling. Anybody would have told him this was not the man to go to; that it had been years since he appeared in court in anything but civil cases; that he might be the man to run down an old deed, but not to plead a case before a jury; that such fires of youth as he might have possessed--and it was said that he had known them once--had burned out long ago. And yet old Jeff, looking at that thin old scholar surrounded by his books, trembled lest his case be turned down; while his friends, had they known, would have trembled lest it be accepted. And no one who knew the colonel would have dreamed that he would take such a case. It must have been some queer bond that exists between old men that moved him. “Very well, sir,” he said, dryly, “I’ll take the case. Yes, I recall Sam Blainey quite distinctly--a fine man. I remember the fishing trip to which you refer.” He asked a number of questions, rather wearily, leaning back, tips of fingers together. His eyes under his spectacles, that were dusty like his window panes, did light up just a moment when his questions brought out the fact that Jeff had seen a car in the woods. Then he copied down the number in a notebook. He would look into that, he said without conviction. “God knows!” It broke from old Jeff, it was a cry for sympathy. “God knows I never burned that sto’!” The voice of the ancient lawyer was dry and unimpressed. “Unfortunately, in a case of this kind it’s court and jury, not the Almighty, which you have to convince.... The Indian, you say, you were staining on that afternoon when you were arrested in the swamp--and by the way, sir, it’s a bad thing to be arrested in a swamp--have you that Indian with you?” Trembling, the old man reached in the pocket of his ragged overcoat. Because of some fear that in his absence his cabin would be searched, he had brought his treasure with him. “Here she is, Colonel,” he said eagerly. The lawyer reached across the table, took the figure, and holding it up looked at it with a smile strangely sweet. Then he arose and went over to a rusty safe in the corner. He put her carefully away in the drawer, closed the iron doors on her and turned the combination. “I’ll just keep this,” he said. “And now that will be all this morning. I’ll try and arrange for your case to be called as near the opening of court as possible. Keep close at home. And remember--don’t tell anybody anything.”